Longtime Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla took to X/Twitter this week and slammed Elon Musk for having "sour grapes" as the latter billionaire attempts to sue OpenAI for allegedly abandoning its original mission.
Khosla has also been a longtime backer of OpenAI. He cut an early venture capital check into OpenAI to the tune of $50 million in 2019, Fortune reported in December.
His firm, Khosla Ventures, also participated in a $300 million round that OpenAI raised in 2023.
"With @elonmusk, feels like a bit of sour grapes in suing @OpenAI, not getting in early enough, not staying committed and now a rival effort. Like they say if you can't innovate, litigate and that's what we have here. Elon of old would would (sic) be building with us to hit the same goal," Khosla posted on Saturday.
Musk posted a terse response.
"Vinod doesn’t know what he is talking about here," Musk wrote, prompting another response from Khosla.
"You jumped in early but didn’t stay committed. And real progress needed real funding. Many non-profits own for profit efforts," Khosla replied.
Musk co-founded OpenAI with current CEO Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others in 2015. Their stated goal was to build advanced artificial intelligence models to benefit humanity.
By 2018, Musk had reportedly grown unhappy with OpenAI's pace of development and direction, and left after a failed attempt to take control of the organization.
The following year, OpenAI added a for-profit arm so it could more easily raise outside investments.
Musk himself has claimed to have donated anywhere in the realm of $50 million to $100 million to OpenAI in its early days.
Last year, Musk launched his own AI research company, dubbed xAI, to compete with OpenAI, referred to OpenAI as "woke AI" in a sarcastic meme post, and called for a temporary pause on developing advanced AI models.
"Agree in what he did at Tesla. I’m a fan and have said without him electric cars would not have happened in next decade. On @OpenAI he just bailed for whatever reason. And is now competing which he has a right to do," Khosla posted in a subsequent response to another user.
Last week, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, Altman and Brockman for alleged breach of contract, as well as providing Microsoft with technology that is allegedly outside the scope of their licensing agreement.
"We have known (Sam Altman) since the early days of @OpenAI and fully support him and the company. These lawsuits are a massive distraction from the goals of getting to AGI and its benefits. Yet, even with all these hurdles, especially given this week, Sam, Greg and team have pushed out better products faster than anyone in AI," Khosla wrote on X/Twitter.
Fellow OpenAI investor Marc Andreessen also jumped into the social media tête-à-tête this weekend, and prodded Khosla into an existential debate about advanced AI models, whether the technology should be open-source or closed-source, and drawing parallels to the development of the nuclear bomb in the 20th century.
"OpenAI must be immediately nationalized," Andreessen posited in a post, in order to prevent China and Russia from accessing or stealing its technology.
Musk and two of his companies are facing their own separate lawsuits.
Former Twitter employees are suing for more than $500 million in unpaid severance obligations, in addition to four former Twitter executives that are seeking $128 million in unpaid severance.
Thousands of Black workers are also suing Tesla for alleged discrimination in a case that was originally filed in 2017. A Superior Court judge in Alameda County ruled on Thursday that the case could proceed, Reuters reported.
